Growing up in the Vietnam era, I never doubted that the Iraq war, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, would turn out to be such a waste. A large portion for the blame of both wars dragging on so long has been the media’s overly amplified portrayal of the troops and their sacrifices. As long as Americans were fed a steady diet of stories depicting the individual trials of the soldiers and their loved ones, no one would focus on the real story: The war was totally wrong. I don’t understand how this equation can be balanced: the war is wrong, but the people who enabled this disaster to proceed are ‘heroes.’
Remember, every person in the U.S. Military from the highest general to the lowest private is an adult who signed up for duty on their own free will.
It has been no secret since the day we evacuated Saigon where we were headed next … the Middle East.
Pearl Harbor proved the danger of an underemphasized military, but we would have been much better off, when Bush put out his call, if people had said ‘Hell No, I Won’t Go’ like back in the Sixties.
The real American hero is the unnoticed, unrecognized, overlooked every-day worker. He is the little guy who, day after day, rolls his tired body out of bed very early and goes out to do the gritty things that make the country run. No one is writing stories about him or giving him parades and candlelight vigils. And, although the only thing he gets out of this deal is a small check and a dirty look from his boss; he’ll be back for more Monday morning, because he knows it is the right thing to do.
Ned P. Johnson
Marion, Va.
